Belle Femmes ATCs

These are my very first attempts at ATCs--Artist Trading Cards.

I ordered an ATC kit from an online supplier: ArtChix, which came with (among other things) watercolor paper in the proper dimensions; images of women, some rub-on transfers; faux postage. . .A lovely cache of inspiration.

This first one I did I call "Open Door," for obvious reasons. I started by splashing blue and purple watercolors to give a soft background. I really liked the blue door image that came with the kit, and I paired it with this lovely faux postage of a noir-ish woman who looks poised to peer around the edge of the door as soon as it opens. The kit also included the fortune tag and the words "open" and "door." The color scheme of the background pointed me to the violet on a crown, and the phrase at the bottom also reiterated the "journey" theme of the rest of the card. I inked the edges to give the whole a finished look.
















I started this second card with the same blue/purple/pink background along with the blue butterfly that came on a transparency. The exotic butterfly lead me to the exotic Spanish woman and the foreign stamp at the bottom. I inked the edges of the fortune with silver leafing pen, and attached the gold border. I named this one "Butterfly Mantilla."



















"Medieval Romance" is where I started to experiment with images that were not part of the Artchix kit. Again, the background is a soft blend of watercolors; this time blue and green. The large figure on the left is a "brass rubbing" of Robert the Bruce. My sister-in-law gave me the miniature figure for Christmas, and I did the rubbing with a silver hard wax crayon--the type used at the London Brass Rubbings Center in the crypt of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The medieval beauty is from a collection of British queens from Alpha Stamps. The "Fig. 2" is a rub-on that was left over from an accordion book class I took at the Scrapbook Shop here in St. Paul. The butterfly was from the ArtChix kit, and I used tea colored Distress Ink to edge the two sides.



















The fourth ATC I call "Queen Caroline." The background is a page from a used French book I bought from Half Price Books. The woman is an image of Caroline Otero I found online--you can read about her here. I actually formatted the image onto some Avery transparent labels, and printed it on my ink jet printer. The crown is a transfer from the ArtChix kit, and the butterfly came from that kit as well. The key is actually a 3D charm from Michael's craft store, from the soon to be liquidated "Stuff by Duff" line. I pierced the card so I could run some very thin beading wire around the key to hold it in place. I twisted the wire and held it down with tape on the back.














I am terribly fond of these, as they are my first efforts, but they are supposed to be traded, so I'm going to have to gird myself to let these go.